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Sunday, February 9, 2014

Review: Velociraptor! Cannibalism! from Game Salute

Velociraptor! Cannibalism! is a game of
survival and mutation that allows you to eat your friends! A game typically
lasts 45-60 mins, and is for 3-6 players ages 8 and up.

I was first introduced to Velociraptor! Cannibalism! by my friend Zak, who
backed it on Kickstarter. We gathered at a game night and he busted this out.
The base raptors are all pretty ludicrous. A Pegged-Legged pirate Raptor, a
punk rock Raptor, and RAPTO-TRON 2000 among others. But as game play goes on
things get right out of hand, or should I say, claw? Tentacle? Wing? All of
these things are possible, and more!

Each player picks a
Raptor. Each raptor has the same base stats, and turn overview. You will notice Card-Sized outlines over your raptor of
choice. These are the upgradable attributes of your starting raptor.

On your turn, you will
draw cards from the jungle deck up to your Speed stat (indicated by the blue
leg). There are three types of cards in the Jungle Deck. Prey, Predators, and
Events. Once you have resolved the Events,contend with the predators. After
that you may move onto the next phase.

You
eat fluffy critters, you monster.

Consume your prey. In
this step you will take all the adorable, helpless critters you hunted down.
Count up all the calories they provide, then use those calories topay for the
upkeep of your body parts. If you can’t cover your upkeep because you don’t
have enough calories, you may either cannibalize your body, or one of your
precious eggs.

Now is the time for
action. Any remaining Calories form the previous phase can be spent on
mutations (which you draw from the Meat Locker), or reproducing. Why do you
want to reproduce? Well, come the final climate change, the raptor with the
most eggs win. Any eggs reproduced this turn are placed in the nursery until
the start of your next turn.

After you have spent
your calories, you can be bold and attack another raptor, with the goal of taking
one of their body parts. Alternatively, you may instead choose to take one of
their eggs that are outside the nursery.

If you still have
unspent cards with calories on them in the form of prey. you can store up to
four of them, along with unused body parts, in your stomach. These will be used
on your following turn.

Imagine
a Raptor with these mutations. Good luck sleeping!

At the beginning of each
round, the first player will turn over a new climate card. Climate cards effect
everyone at the table, and most of them make it harder to maximize your
calories.

The game ends in one of
two ways. The first, and most common, is the aforementioned Climate deck
running out. The second is if the last player of the round purchases the last
egg. As I mentioned previously, the winner is the raptor with the most eggs. If
you count up all your eggs and you have a tie,the player with the highest
calorie total wins.

Velociraptor!
Cannibalism! features some really great art. It’s packed with hilarious moments
that include storing penguins in your stomach to later turn into snow crab legs
for your Raptor. All of this comes in a really professional package. The whole
game is top quality. The rule book has a lot of reference images to help you
easily grasp the concepts covered in the game. For the Cthulhu fanatics out
there, look for the Mythos Expansion, the copy I bought from Fun Again Games
came with it and adds all manner of Lovecraftian tid-bits.

Some of my favorite moments of this game came from the player interaction. Maybe I'm mean spirited. Watching another player gloat over their sweet tiger head mutation. Well that is just too much for me. I feel compelled to take them down a notch. By notch I mean exactly one tiger head.

Another key feature of Velociraptor! Cannibalism! comes in the form of Flavor Text. There is some really great flavor text on the cards. The Cow head mutation is named Dr. Moo. Yes. He is wearing the scarf. Then there are the Otters. Flavor text reads "They hold hands!". You convert these into calories. Which to me is delightful. Lest we forget the tail. The Prehensile tail contains no flavor text. It wields a dagger. Naturally.

3 comments:

I was able to get in a game, or partial game of this at BGGcon. My first impression was that it was a cool theme, but maddening game. After talking with a few people I think we were just tired and playing it wrong. After reading this review, I want to give this game another shot.

I hope you do, my gaming group had a love/hate with it. The people who enjoyed it most usually had all the best mutations. I don't see an easy way to make a come back in this game. once you've got a high enough attack or defense going on, you are pretty much invincible. So the real trick is to attack and take a mutation from someone as soon as you can. Even if you just use their body part for calories.